

Behind every ambitious business goal is a simple variant that decides whether it will be met: employee performance.
However, after a few years of industry challenges and remote work, it can be challenging for managers to keep up engagement within their teams. The impact of new work structures may have impacted employee performance and the results are only now coming to light.
In their State of the Global Workforce report, Gallup found that while 34% of global employees were scored as “thriving in life”, that number had dropped from 2022 to 2023. Meanwhile, 58% were said to be struggling. This has directly impacted employee engagement, as well as performance.
Why is Employee Performance Important?
Every team thrives when all members are motivated and contribute their best. By addressing performance challenges early on, you create an environment where everyone can succeed together. While it’s easy to overlook underperformance, taking proactive steps ensures these issues don’t persist, allowing your team to stay strong and focused.
The great news is that enhancing motivation and understanding the root causes can inspire positive change and help everyone get back on track, creating a more collaborative and high-performing team.
What Causes Employees to Underperform?
There are many reasons an employee might be underperforming, from personal to professional. To start addressing the issue, you first need to look around and see if there is a pattern of underperformance.
Suppose you only see a few isolated issues. The chances are it could be due to something in the employee’s personal life or being unclear about their role and expectations in the organisation.
On the other hand, if you’re seeing a significant number of employees struggling to perform as well as expected, you’re likely having issues around connectivity, motivation and clear career progression.
One useful way to find out where the problem lies is to conduct an employee engagement survey and get some insight into how your employees feel. We have developed some handy techniques for improving performance if you struggle to manage your underperforming employees.
3 Easy Ways to Improve Employee Performance
1. Lay Out Expectations Clearly – And Early
There is always a possibility that your employee doesn’t completely understand what their responsibilities are. This can be disheartening for anyone, as the employee gets the sense they are failing at their job without knowing how to fix it.
Pride or fear may stop them from bringing it up, so one of the first things you should do is draw up and share a detailed explanation of what you need from them.
2. Establish Open Communication
To help poorly performing employees get back on top, you need to address the reason behind their lacklustre performance. And to get to the bottom of that, it’s essential to foster an open line of communication between you and them.
If an employee can trust that you have their best interests at heart and the good of the organisation, they are much more likely to open up to you and share their concerns.
Personal life struggles will inevitably surface in the workplace at some stage. We are only human. Many things can sap energy, from problems at home to global pandemics or war, and lead to poor performance. Knowing how to support your team through challenging times can make a huge difference.
3. Improve Your Employee Recognition Program
Who doesn’t like to feel as though their hard work is being recognised?
Not only can regular rewards and recognition help high performers reach new heights, but they can also encourage poor performers to make improvements.
Sharing successes and shouting about wins can be a massive factor in improving motivation, and our employee recognition platform makes it wonderfully easy to encourage your team every day.
What Else Can I Do to Improve Employee Performance?
Your opinions are never exhausted. Here are five additional ways to boost your employee performance. And remember, our employee recognition software is designed to improve productivity across hybrid, remote and distributed teams. Book a demo with our experts to learn how.
Improve Your Onboarding Process
Onboarding is crucial for settling employees into a role and setting them up for success. Suppose you’re noticing a decline in performance once onboarding is over.
There’s a chance that your process isn’t in-depth or supportive enough, leaving employees floundering and less able to hit your expectations. A strong process or good onboarding software could be all you need to see an improvement.
Activate Managers
If you want an employee to continue to grow and perform well over time with you, you must display strong leadership.
It may be that they feel they need more check-ins to ensure they’re able to meet the goals set for them, or you need to invest in more training or resources to help them thrive. Activating managers to model positive behaviour is the key to higher-performing employees.
Find Ways to Reduce Stress
Stress can greatly impact an employee’s well-being, and when mental health suffers. We all know that a little bit of stress is normal and can even be positive, but there is a tipping point where it can quickly become detrimental. Working in ways to help employees manage stress can help improve performance too.
Offer Better Opportunities
Sometimes, employees start to underperform when they can’t see a clear path for themselves. Opportunities for career progression allow people to plan and see how hard work could pay off in the future.
When employees feel trapped or as though they will be stuck at the same level forever, it can drain their willingness to invest in the day-to-day.
Create a Culture of Peer-to-peer Support
Sometimes, the most effective way to help an employee who seems to have lost the will to perform well is to work on team building. An organisation that feels connected, with good peer-to-peer recognition opportunities and support, is more likely to leave employees more motivated to help the whole team thrive. Encourage employees to pick each other up through our Boosts and see how high-performance habits naturally begin to form.
We turn your disconnected employees into engaged teams.
Learn more about our proven strategies
How Mo Can Improve Employee Performance
Mo is a culture and engagement platform that uses data insights to improve engagement scores while reducing staff turnover. We strategically help people teams create great places to work through continuous, positive action.
If you’re looking for ways to take action on measuring employee engagement, learn more about how to shift the dial at the manager level and transform insights into action. To find out if you’re eligible for our money-back guarantee, book a demo with our team.